Daily Archive for May 20th, 2009

Gluten Free Recipe: Fried Rice

This is not exactly a case where it’s hard to make the recipe gluten-free, but I do have a good Fried Rice recipe and I thought that I would share it for this week’s What’s For Dinner? Wednesday.

The thing that’s really excellent about Fried Rice is that you can start with the basics and add about anything that you have the time and patience to cut into small pieces. Likewise, you can make excellent fried rice with a bare minimum of ingredients.

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Here are the basics:

2 cups old cooked rice, refrigerated
2 eggs
pinch salt
3 Tbs peanut or canola oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
thumb sized piece of ginger, diced
1 medium sized green or red bell pepper, seeded and cut into short strips
1/4 pound mushrooms chopped or quartered
1/2 cup salted roasted peanuts
2 Tbs gluten free soy sauce or tamari

Here are excellent optional extras to add if you have them around and want to add them:

2 green onions chopped
1/2 pound cooked chicken, ham, shrimp, or pork, diced
head of broccoli, chopped
1/2 cup purple cabbage, chopped
1 Tbs toasted sesame oil
dash or two of Chinese hot chili oil
splash rice vinegar
few slices of cucumber for garnish
few tomato wedges for garnish

Take the rice and rub it between your hands to break it up. Set aside. Heat up your wok on medium.

When wok is hot, add 1 Tbsp of oil. Let oil get hot and then add eggs. Scramble them the way you like them. Remove eggs from wok.

Turn up the heat on the wok to medium-high. Add another Tbsp of oil. Let oil get hot and add onion, garlic, and ginger. Stir fry until soft. Add all the veggies, any meat or shrimp, and peanuts. Stir fry about another two minutes. Remove and set aside.

Add remaining oil to wok and let heat up. Add rice and stir fry until heated – about 2 minutes. Stir in the veggie mix and add soy sauce. Mix it up gently and taste it to make sure you have a good flavor. Add more ginger or soy sauce if desired. Add sprinkle of rice vinegar and/or Chinese hot pepper oil. Finally, add toasted sesame oil (if you have it.) The reason you add the sesame oil at the end is that it loses its flavor when cooked.

Gluten Free Fried Rice, Coming Up!

gluten-free-fried-rice-dscn4236

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Product Review: Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Rice Pasta and Cheddar

Yes you read that right: Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

Of course, they call it Gluten Free Rice Pasta & Cheddar. I’m probably not the best person to be reviewing Macaroni and Cheese, because I’ve really always been more of a Ramen guy. When it comes to Ramen, I like it packaged, cheap and unhealthy. For a fact, the sort of Ramen I like is nothing like what you’ll get at a Japanese restaurant. It’s too bad I don’t know of anybody making gluten free Ramen. As a matter of fact, I just did a Google search on gluten free Ramen noodles and came up with a lot of people suggesting rice noodles, which we all know is just not going to be the same. Do I sound bitter?

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Rice Pasta & Cheddar

Luckily we’re not talking about Ramen today, we’re talking about Macaroni and Cheese. My doctor happens to love Mac ‘n’ Cheese (hey Dr. B.!). As you would expect, the Trader Joe’s gluten free Rice Pasta and Cheddar box contains a bunch of noodles and a cheese packet. The cheese packet actually says “GLUTEN FREE CHEESE” on it. This is a little strange, but reassuring. Here are the ingredients: rice pasta (rice flour), cheddar cheese (cultured pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes), whey, buttermilk, butter, salt, natural flavor, sodium phosphate, and annatto extract (color). If you’re wondering what annatto is, it’s a South American tree extract commonly used in lipstick and also to color (you guessed it) cheddar cheese.

The box makes two and a half servings. Trader Joe’s counts one cup as a serving. A serving is 280 calories. So the whole box would be 700 calories. Like a lot of the Trader Joe’s gluten free products I’ve reviewed, the Mac ‘n’ Cheese has a lot of salt. Weighing in at 390 mg in a serving. So the box has almost a half teaspoon of salt!

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Mac 'n' Cheese

To me there’s this fascination with super-processed comfort foods like Mac ‘n’ Cheese or Ramen. It was all I could do to keep myself from sticking a finger in the powder to taste it. As you might expect, the instructions are easy to follow and it’s a quick meal to cook. I have this memory of watching someone make Mac ‘n’ Cheese and seeing them add butter, but the butter is already in there! I want to know how they make powdered butter.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Mac 'n' Cheese

And here is the finished product. Mine ended up too soggy, but I’m sure that’s my fault. It is rich and wow is it salty. I actually think it’s too salty, but like I said, I’m not really a Mac ‘n’ Cheese guy. Other people might like it that salty. Also, we both agreed that the noodles are a little strange. They kind of crumble in a strange way when you chew them. I like my Mac ‘n’ Cheese with some applesauce. Luckily we had some around.

I didn’t really like this product and I’m thinking its main audience is going to be gluten free people who really love the regular sort of boxed Mac ‘n’ Cheese mix.

Here are links to some of my other gluten free Trader Joe’s reviews.
Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Pancake and Waffle Mix
Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Banana Waffles
Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Pancakes
Trader Joe’s Pancake and Waffle Mix A’La the Shasta MountInn Bed & Breakfast

We want to know: I’d love to hear from some real Mac ‘n’ Cheese fans to see if Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Rice Pasta and Cheddar compares well to the real thing. Do you have a favorite Trader Joe’s product? Let us know in the comments.

Times we have visited: once (but we feel confident about our score.)
Overall rating: 2 out of 5 stars (too salty)
Price compared to “regular”: Same

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